please help! what am i doing wrong

[Kimbo]

i know we've left it late - 7 months too late - but i started to get leah into a routine with bath at half 7, and bottle & bed at 8.
it worked perfect for 2 nights, then the last couple of nights its been a nightmare and i've given up and fetched her down.
she has a bath for 20-30mins, with johnsons bedtime bath in, plays for a lil while then i take her straight into the bedroom to get her dried and dressed, then into bed.
she will fall asleep on her bottle, then as soon as i start to move she wakes up and will scream scream scream until i fetch her down.
I've been trying to tire her out in the afternoon, and so i thought the long bath and bottle would knock her out for the night!
obviously not working because she just screams and theres no way i can leave her screaming until she falls asleep cos it breaks my heart!
what am i doing wrong?

 

[happy-chick]

Aww kim your doing nothing wrong chick!!

Shes so used to you being there that when your not or your planning on leaving the room she thinks 'nope mum, i dont think so' and screams lol. My HV said about trying the disappearing chair routine, its a type of controlled crying where u move your chair further & further away each night, might work for you? We've tried CC and it didnt work for us but maybe for you it will?

I would say if you are going to take her out of her cot like you have tonight then defo dont bring her down, be as boring as possible (no playing, chatting etc) so that she doesnt find being awake that interesing and sooner or later she will decide that she might aswell just go to sleep cos mummys boring

Its hard kim, REALLY hard but i'd say the key is to be consistant... Keep her routine the same every day, whether she goes to sleep or not keep it exactly the same so that she starts to get used to it and eventually (and unfortunately in her own time) she will start to go to sleep when you finish her last bottle.

We have finally got Ellie to go down ok and sleep through and thats through being really persistant and keeping her routine the same every night, we've done nothing spectacular yet she was going to bed at gone 11pm and any time she felt like and now shes asleep and in bed by 8:30 - 9pm latest. Shes got into this routine herself, the only thing we've done it to keep her routine the same.

Good luck chick xxx

 

[Squiglet]

You're not doing anything wrong, per say... Remember you've got a bright little person on your hands. She knows that if she screams, mummy comes and picks her up and takes her downstairs. Babies are sociable little butterflies and do much better when with other people so they cry when they sense they are alone.

If you want her to stay in her bed and not be picked up, you need to let her cry. If you are happy with the situation then don't worry about it, but if you do want her to go down and stay down without fuss you need to teach her that mummy won't just pick her up if she cries.

As I said you've done nothing wrong... just if you pick her up because she cries she will cry to be picked up. I do it with lil miss for the most part but the going to bed at night, took lots of effort, in feeding her to sleep then if she woke up refusing to pick her up again... She still cries now and we've been doing that for months... She will eventually go off though.

 

[Sherlock]

Ditto what the others have said really.

If she cries and you go in to her then keep it darkish, don't talk much and avoid eye contact if possible and try to settle her back down. Don't go back downstairs and take her with you as it will defeat what you are trying to acheive. You need to stick to something and over time she'll learn and adjust.

I like the chair idea also. I used to do something similar with one of the children I looked after and within a week they were ok with me going out of the room once they were tucked in.

What time has she been going to bed in the past? And what were you doing differently. You may need to look at moving her bedtime back slowly perhaps also. If she is used to being up till 10pm and beyond for example she probably won't like 8pm much. She'll need to go back slowly, half an hour over a week. That sort of thing. So do the bath and bottle at 9.30 and make it low key and quiet. A few nights of this and leaving her in her cot and not taking her back out etc and then move it to 9pm and so on.

 

[Kimbo]

thanks for your replies... i cant leave her crying - so maybe it is all my fault lol
it sounds as though she's being hurt real bad off someone, that's how bad the screaming is.

What time has she been going to bed in the past? And what were you doing differently. You may need to look at moving her bedtime back slowly perhaps also. If she is used to being up till 10pm and beyond for example she probably won't like 8pm much. She'll need to go back slowly, half an hour over a week. That sort of thing. So do the bath and bottle at 9.30 and make it low key and quiet. A few nights of this and leaving her in her cot and not taking her back out etc and then move it to 9pm and so on.

i like that idea.. she usually goes to bed with me about 10.30/11pm, so yeah 7.30 is a big jump back.
i will try that, moving it slowly back.. tomorrow night i will bathe & feed her at 9.30pm like you said.. and give that a go.. then next week 9pm and so on.
wish me luck..... she's WIDE awake!

 

[beanie]

we went through this with Seren. I don't believe in CC so what I did instead was similar to the disappearing chair.I would sush her and stroke her back etc till she went to sleep, then over the space of a fortnight it would take less time and I was able to move away further and further. Seren also went to bed at 11pm and it took us a few months to get her going to bed at 7.30pm, we just did it slowly and in my eyes the least stressful way. It worked, Seren would look forward to bed and would sleep through.

 

[Kimbo]

well i spent from 10 - 12 crying last night because she just wouldnt stop screaming and i literally felt like banging my had against the wall im so tired!
todays a new day and tonights a new night so will try again!

 

[CoreysMummy]

Good Luck for tonight!!

 

[Jen & Her Men]

Hiya hun just wanted to give you some and to say i know exactly how you feel and think it must be an age thing too.

James has always been a brilliant sleeper but these past few weeks have been a nightmare. Thought it was his teeth but he has 6 now and i was hoping we would have a break..but he wakes up 4 or 5 times a night

He wakes up really crying like he has had a bad dream and big real tears, and other times he will whimper, then i think when he realises that i am not with him, he panicks and starts properly crying like he is frightened.

I cant leave my baby boy crying like that when he sounds so scared. So I go in and get him. I try and get him back off in his room but he gets sooo restless and im so tired with being preggers etc that i end up taking him back to my bed where he will go to sleep but he is so restless and pulls my hair, scratches my face etc that i hardly get any sleep anyway....

Its really tough to know what to do for the best but i sympathise babe and i deffo cant do the controlled crying thing either...maybe if he was just in a paddy i could but when he sounds scared its impossibe....


lets hope our babies start sleeping again soon!!

 

[Babylicious]

We've had similar with harrison his bed time was getting later and later. We just moved it back slowly and stopped him having a big sleep after 4pm worked a treat and he's asleep now x

 

[Kylie1007]

Although we've had a loose routine for a long time, at Finn's 8 month check we were told that he really needed to be going down awake because we don't need someone to get us to sleep so they need to get into the habit of falling asleep on their own - fair enough but easier said than done. I also cannot leave him to "cry it out" because he never would so...what I do is this:

bath then changed and downstairs - try to keep activities calm
upstairs to bed and drink of milk
into bed
read him a story - I hold his hand while I read to him and sometimes he falls asleep half way through, sometimes not.

Also we are trying our hardest to not bring him back downstairs once he's in bed.

He is definately the sort of baby who will need hand holding and then gradually working away from him. It's very hard though, isn't it. I've got my community nursery nurse coming to see me on Friday to help me with the whole sleep thing.

 

[jodie_honey]

hey hun its nuthin ur doin wrong its just unfamiliar to leah to be put to bed, babies do NOT like this lol
abigail has been a nightmare, 5 nights last week she didnt sleep for longer than 10 omins thru the night, ended up drivin round with er at 3 n 4 in the mornin which was a stupid thing to do.
i know how ur feelin, so this week ive been feedin her at 8:30 n puttin her to bed she goes off fine and shes been wakin a couple of times in the night but ive not give her milk just water n shes gone back off, shes slept straight thru 1 night so fingers crossed its workin.
u n leah will fix into ur own routine in ur own time i know how hard it is tho believe me i was pullin my hair out n cryin n rly gettin agitated with her last week even tho it wasnt her fault i was just exhausted, i cnt leave her cryin either. good luck chick, hope it happens soon for u xxx

 

[sazzylou]

Iz used to go up to bed with us, but we slowely started moving it back (from 10pm , then 9.30, then 8pm when beth went to bed) then on her own she's kind of settled into going to bed at around 6.30 - 7pm. She's just too sleepy to stay up any later, which suits us as we now get our evenings back

We used to have the crying thing aswell. She used to fall asleep on us all the time, so when we go her into a routine of putting her in her own bed to sleep, she HATED it. She used to scream her head off, but as long as i knioew she was clean and fed i would NEVER pick her up. Id sit by her cot and gently stroke / pat her tummy or stroke her hair and say "sshhh" quietly. Didnt bloody work for a few nights, but then it did work! She stopped screaming after about 20 mins, then the screaming got less and less. It was an easy way to get her to sleep as she understood that mummy was with her, but she also started to understand that no matter what she did i wasnt going to pick her up! Worked for me

hope bedtimes get better for you xxxxxxxx